Caveman or Metrosexual: Where's the middle ground?

In preparation for beginning our own family, we have started to do a bit of reading up on parenting, pregnancy and child-rearing. In doing so, we have noticed a disturbing trend. Either there is no information for fathers, or a small paragraph in a 400 page book that basically says suck it up and support your wife. When there is a little bit more of an elaborate write up (a whole page!!!!) it advises men to not faint during labour, expect a moody and hormonal wife with strange cravings that they should satisfy and that you may get sympathy symptoms. They say sympathy symptoms (called couvade) allow you to empathize with your wife and show her that you are committed in having this baby, but in reality she is likely to be far too engrossed in her own pregnancy to care about what you are going through (either that or she's puking too much to notice). This discrepancy expands to encompass the role a father should take in raising his child and being with his wife through pregnancy. It seems that men are grouped into one category in their role as fathers to be.
The stereotypical bubbling cave man who doesn't care about what his wife is going through and needs to be reminded that he should care for his ailing wife. Basically the man is portrayed as an idiot.
But we find that doesn't even begin to portray what we would like to be as parents. Whatever happened to the involved Father? You know, the one that reminds the wife about her appointments and joins her at every one. The one that goes to the birthing classes, reads books on pregnancy and child-birth. The one that shops around with his wife for baby items and even points out things that he likes or thinks they need. The one that talks to the baby while still in the womb. The one that gets up in the middle of the night to help his wife. Or the one who changes diapers willingly, without being asked.
What has happened to our society that when you do find these men, they are mocked and ridiculed for being less than a man? How is it that you can go into a library full of books, with shelves devoted to pregnancy and parenting, and find only a handful of books that address fatherhood with the perspective that the man is not an idiot? It's no wonder that we have a society full of bumbling cavemen-we've created them by emasculating those who try to be good fathers. No man wants to be a bumbling cavemen nor do they want to be a girly metrosexual parent. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground addressed in popular culture. What about those men who want to be involved---the ones we always dreamed of having in our childhood? The Bill Cosby of parenting. We know these men exist! We see them occasionally pop up, taking care of their kids, forming them into the young men and woman we know they should be. We only hope that as we contemplate taking the plunge into parenthood, that we can find similar men who share the values of parenting that we aspire to.